The invention relates to a compensating shaft for compensating mass forces and/or mass moments of a reciprocating piston internal combustion engine. The compensating shaft has at least one bearing journal, on whose outer casing surface the compensating shaft is supported in the radial direction at a housing support position in the reciprocating piston internal combustion engine, and at least one unbalanced section bordering the bearing journal in the axial direction.
Such a compensating shaft is known from DE 10 2004 014 014 A1, which is viewed as a class-forming patent. The compensating shaft proposed there has two bearing journals each with unbalanced sections bordering both sides. In a known way, the unbalanced effect of the unbalanced sections rotating with the compensating shaft acts against the free mass forces and/or mass moments of the reciprocating piston internal combustion engine, in that the unbalanced force is introduced via the bearing journals into associated housing support positions of the reciprocating piston internal combustion engine. The unbalanced direction, which is stationary relative to the bearing journal, is directed onto the side of the unbalanced section facing the unbalanced direction for forming a load zone on the bearing journal, while this bearing journal is load free or at most minimally loaded due to dynamic effects on the side of the unbalanced section facing away from the unbalanced direction. Consequently, solid bearing journals of a compensating shaft according to the cited document are mechanically overdimensioned in their load-free or low-load peripheral region. Such overdimensioning, however, is equivalent to unnecessarily carrying along material and consequently mass and directly counteracts the increasing effort for lightweight construction, which conserves resources and the environment, especially in the automotive industry.